Long Drive Home (16 page)

* * *

And then it was Christmas Eve. Sara brought over a box of ornaments and we decorated the tree, taking turns choosing Christmas songs on the computer. When we were done, she said it still looked bare, so we strung a bunch of popcorn. Then we opened presents. I’d gotten her a few books, some doll clothes, and pink roller skates. She’d made me a picture frame, hand-painted and decorated with fabric-and-button flowers. The photo was her on Santa’s lap. Liz had taken her to see him at the mall that weekend, something we did every year, only this time I hadn’t been there. When I told her how much I liked it, I had tears in my eyes. She said Liz had cried, too, when they’d had the picture taken.

“You’re just growing up so fast.”

We settled in with one of her new books,
Guinness World Records
—she was fascinated by the three-foot-long fingernails, as I’d known she would be—and proceeded to sample everything in the gift basket. No matter how hard we tried, though, there was no forgetting where we were.

“Can’t you come over tomorrow,” she said, “just for a little while? Please?”

_______

That wasn’t the only time I came close to telling you our being apart was all your mom’s idea. She claimed she was doing it for you, but I knew you wouldn’t have wanted her to. I knew you
would have asked her to stop. But in telling you, I’d have been using you, pitting you against her, and that wasn’t something I was willing to do. I’ve wondered, though, if she might have listened to you. And if the ends would have justified the means.

_______

After Liz picked Sara up, the apartment felt emptier than ever. I put the Christmas music back on, opened a beer, and started gathering the wrapping paper strewn across the floor. I picked at what was left of the gift basket. I took a length of popcorn off the tree and dangled it for the Chairman to chase. I wrapped the necklace I’d bought for Liz—a delicate silver one from her favorite boutique in Maplewood. She’d said no presents, so I planned on giving it to her when we got back together. I wanted to have gifts for all the holidays we’d missed.

When it got dark, I thought about going to Derek’s, but all day I’d been worrying that I was getting carried away. This was a guy with a gun, after all. What if some night he were waiting for me in the Suburban, or snuck around from behind the house? For that matter, what if he called the police?

The pub seemed as good a place as any to think it over. And it turned out I wasn’t the only one with nowhere better to be. I ordered a pint and stood near the crowded bar, waiting for a stool. Dan was wearing a Santa hat. The Grinch was on TV. Now and then, someone in the crowd would
boo him. I didn’t talk to anyone, but it was a comfort having people around. I was still waiting for a seat when somebody clapped me on the shoulder.

“Well, well,” Rizzo said. “If it isn’t the crosswalk hero.”

I felt as though a trapdoor had swung open at my feet. For all the time I’d spent anticipating this moment, seeing him was still a surprise. I could only assume he’d followed me, or been waiting for me, and now, finally, he was going to arrest me, having timed it so I could wake in jail on Christmas morning.

Then I got a look at him. His eyes were glassy. He took a clumsy step backwards as he held up two fingers for Dan. “One for me,” he said, “one for the hero.”

I turned to leave, but he grabbed my arm, the sore one, and smiled when he saw me wince.

“Everything okay there, Detective?” Dan said, glancing over from the tap.

“Old friends.” Releasing my arm, Rizzo nodded to a table in the corner where he’d been sitting. I considered walking out, but I figured he’d follow me. The last thing I wanted was to be alone with him. I sat down. A waitress brought two beers. Rizzo clinked his against mine.

“Look at us,” he said. “Christmas Eve, two divorced guys, all by our lonesomes. We could start a club.”

“I’m not divorced.” I handed him Linda Schwartz’s card. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“Finally lawyer up?” He tucked the card into his pocket without looking at it. “Well, I hate to disappoint, Mr.
Bauer, but the prosecutor, in his infinite wisdom, feels we don’t have enough to bring charges. Especially now, with the autopsy.”

He clinked his glass against mine again, too hard, and took a long swallow. I stared at the beer he’d sloshed onto the table, feeling not as relieved as I might have expected and wondering if this was just another of his mind games. So they weren’t going to arrest me. That was something—supposing it was true. But what about closing the case?

Beer had begun dripping onto the floor. I tried to scoot back from the table, but the wall was in the way.

“I have to be somewhere,” I said.

“Running out on me? After I bring such good tidings?” He shook his head. “No, sir, no can do. Got something to show you first.” There was a basket of pretzels on the table. He took two and arranged them between us. “You,” he said, pointing at one, “and him. Beer glass is the tree.” He slowly moved the pretzels toward one another, reenacting the accident more or less as it had happened, including, of course, my cutting into and out of the other lane. I held my breath as he flipped Juwan’s pretzel, tapped it against the glass, then closed his hand on it.

“Pretty good, huh?” he said. “Only question is, did you do it on purpose? I got a theory on that too.”

He opened his hand and ate a piece of the broken pretzel. My stomach was tight as a fist.

“Long as I got the floor,” he said, “long as I’m talking out of school, here’s a little secret about confessions. Ever wonder
why a guy owns up to something when it’s only going to get him into trouble?” He held out a piece of the pretzel, shrugged when I didn’t take it, ate it himself. “No need to knock yourself out guessing, Mr. Bauer. I’ll just tell you. It’s
stress
. That’s what does it every time, good old-fashioned stress.”

As he began to catalogue the various sources of that stress—guilt, regret, shame, anxiety—and detail their psychological and physiological effects, I searched the bar for a familiar face, anybody I might latch onto. But Dan was busy with customers, the waitress had disappeared, and the closest tables were all college kids, oblivious to us.

“… and sooner or later,” he was saying, “for most people, it gets to be too much. Sooner or later they confess. But not you, Mr. Bauer. You apparently have no conscience! It’s like you’re broke inside. Which is interesting to me, as a student of human nature. Usually you only get that with your hardened criminals.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, like the answer to some important question might be faintly etched on my forehead. Then he leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Look, Glen—mind if I call you Glen?—I don’t think you’re a bad guy for what you did. A vehicular homicide, hey, that can happen to anyone. We’re all of us just a rough day or a wrong move away from fuck all.” He pushed his glass aside and leaned closer. “No, what makes
you
a bad guy is not owning up to it. Not letting those people get the justice they deserve, even if all that justice is, is you walk.”

I put five dollars on the table. My voice cracked when I spoke. “She wants you to close the case,” I said. “She wants it to be over.”

Rizzo whistled. “How noble of you. How lucky she is to have you on her side.”

He opened his wallet, but instead of taking the money, he brought out a photo and held it up. Juwan at around Sara’s age, blue sweater vest over a white oxford, missing a front tooth just like she was. A school picture. I could imagine Rizzo calling Tawana, encouraging her to sue, offering his full cooperation. I glanced away, but still he held it there, trying to make me look, until finally he reached over, tucked it into my shirt pocket, and patted my chest.

I got up, not caring if he followed me out. I would have run if I’d had to. But he just swiveled to let me by.

“Like I was saying, though,” he said, toasting me again, “nice job saving that kid. Merry Christmas to you and yours.”

Outside, I started to throw the photo in the trash but stopped when I noticed handwriting on the back—Juwan’s name, in a child’s overly deliberate script. It had probably been intended for a classmate, just as Sara and her friends swapped school pictures. Wishing I’d left it on the table, I slid it back into my pocket and tried to forget about him,
but there was no escaping what Rizzo had said. I walked away from the bar feeling as if I were under a spotlight. It followed me down the street to the apartment building, around back to the parking lot. It shone into my car as I headed toward Derek’s. It beat down on me as I opened two warm cans of beer from the console, one after the other, and drank them as fast as I could, trying to keep my mind blank. With every breath I took, I could feel the photo in my pocket. I remember wishing I could show Derek and make him understand he’d been part of a chain of events that had led to a boy’s death. Why should he get to go through life not knowing? But of course he wouldn’t have given a shit, wouldn’t have seen the connection. To him it would have been meaningless talk.

When I got to his house, I did what I should have done in the first place. I called the police. I told them a man had threatened me with a gun and gave them his address. I figured they could make more trouble for him than I ever might hope to, and now that I was apart from Liz and Sara, I no longer cared if he found out who I was and where I lived.

They were there in no time, five or six cars with their lights and sirens going. I was waiting on the sidewalk in front of the house. Derek appeared at the window, next to the Christmas tree.

“That guy right there,” I said to the first two officers I saw.

As Derek came out onto the porch, both of them drew their guns and shouted for him to stop where he was and
put his hands on his head. Other officers were taking up positions behind their cars.

“What the hell’s going on?” Derek said, raising his hands. “This is my house.”

They brought him out onto the sidewalk and began patting him down. He was wearing his usual track suit, this one Nike, red with white stripes.

“That’s the guy you should be frisking,” he said, looking over at me.

A couple of officers took our IDs, then asked what was going on. I told them what had happened on Thomas Boulevard. They were confused. They wanted to know why I was reporting it
now,
after all this time.

I said I hadn’t gotten his license plate number. “But then tonight, I was driving by, and I saw his truck in the driveway. I recognized the four wheels in back.”

“Lying bitch,” Derek said. “He’s out here every night. Just sits over there in his car.”

By now, the other officers had put away their guns and were standing around watching. The two officers questioning us exchanged a look. They asked Derek if what I was saying was true.

“I don’t know nothing about no gun,” he said. “But yeah, we had a little run-in. Guy gave me the finger. I go over to see what for and he tells me he was flipping off some cop.”

The taller cop cut me a smirk.

“Do you own a handgun, Mr. Dye?” the other one said.

He shook his head. “Like I said, I don’t know nothing about no gun.”

“Search his truck,” I said, surer than ever the gun wasn’t legal.

Derek smiled, took out his keys, and pressed a button. The Suburban’s lights flashed. “Be my guest.”

But they wouldn’t do it—no warrant, no probable cause. They were ready for this to be over. I’d called them out for nothing.

“How about
his
car?” Derek said. “I’m thinking our man here has had a few. Might have a bottle in there.”

The officers had had enough, though. One went to answer the radio in his car while the other handed back our licenses. He apologized to Derek for disturbing him on Christmas Eve and thanked him for his cooperation. Then he told me 911 was strictly for emergencies and that I was lucky not to be getting a citation.

“Now get out of here,” he said. “Vacate the premises.”

I crossed the street. The other officer was still in his car, filling out paperwork. The rest were leaving or gone. I stopped short when I got a look at his profile, but it was a moment or two before it dawned on me why he seemed familiar. For all I knew, he was the same officer who’d run the light on Thomas Boulevard. Not likely, to be sure, but the possibility unnerved me. He glanced up from his clipboard and cracked the window.

“What?”

* * *

I drove around until the police were gone, pounding another beer, then parked in front of Derek’s house and headed up the walk. I was counting on his still not having the gun on him. He opened the door before I could knock.

“Get the fuck out of here, motherfucker,” he said.

I swung as hard as I could, with my good arm. Even with two good arms, I wouldn’t have had a chance against him, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was hitting him. I missed his nose and got his mouth instead—his teeth. It felt like I’d put my fist into a grinder. I didn’t have time to swing again. He hit me square in the jaw, once. The porch sprang up, slamming into my body. Everything began to spin. I fully intended to hit him again, but I was barely onto my hands and knees, reaching for a plastic chair for balance, when he kicked me in the ribs. That knocked the wind out of me. I fell off the porch, got hung up in some shrubs, then collapsed onto the snow-covered grass, desperate for even the smallest breath of air. I couldn’t see him anymore, but I could hear him coming down the steps—taking his time, it seemed. The world had become a vacuum. I gasped for air again and gagged on a mouthful of blood. Then I heard his girlfriend shouting for him to stop. He was standing over me now.

“Dude must have a death wish.” He touched a finger to the blood at the corner of his mouth, then took out his phone and called the police. He told them he’d been attacked, for no reason, by a stranger at his home. I wanted to say bullshit, I had reasons, but my jaw was numb. After a
few tries, I got my feet under me again. He was still on the phone.

“Honey,” his girlfriend said. “He’s right behind you.”